The EQ Alternaverse ((PART 1))

Omegas in captive situations often fare worse because they can't escape - most wild omegas will leave the pack if the dominant wolves get too fierce. (which, when you consider the survival odds for lone wolves, says a lot about how bad it can get).

http://www.wolftracker.com/Q_&_A/omega.htm

So yes it looks like Wendy's "rule" for Abodean omegas in the wolfpack is vastly different from Earth's version.

Quote :

From Facebook: when we think of an "omega" wolf in a wolf pack, we think of him or her as the lowest member...the one everybody picks on. Tain't so! The role of the omega is vital. No pack is whole without it. An omega's biggest responsibility is to reduce tension by encouraging play. What would a king do without his court jester?

I'm gonna Word of God the Alternaverse right now and say "Alt-wolves are like earth wolves - with ALL the warts that involves*" - because romanticizing nature never ends well - as Pool is about to learn very shortly.

*not counting Starjumper, of course. He's the Garry Stu of wolves, and practically perfect in every way!

So you didn't get a chance to read the link I posted?
Here's an excerpt:

However, Mech explains, his studies of wild wolves have found that wolves live in families: two parents along with their younger cubs. Wolves do not have an innate sense of rank; they are not born leaders or born followers. The "alphas" are simply what we would call in any other social group "parents." The offspring follow the parents as naturally as they would in any other species. No one has "won" a role as leader of the pack; the parents may assert dominance over the offspring by virtue of being the parents.

While the captive wolf studies saw unrelated adults living together in captivity, related, rather than unrelated, wolves travel together in the wild. Younger wolves do not overthrow the "alpha" to become the leader of the pack; as wolf pups grow older, they are dispersed from their parents' packs, pair off with other dispersed wolves, have pups, and thus form packs of their owns.

Excerpt cont:

"This doesn't mean that wolves don't display social dominance, however. When a recent piece purporting to dispel the "myth" of canine dominance appeared on Psychology Today, ethologist Marc Bekoff quickly stepped in. Wolves (and other animals, including humans), display social dominance, he notes; it just isn't always easy to boil dominant behavior down to simple explanations. Dominant behavior and dominance relationships can be highly situational, and can vary greatly from individual to individual even within the same species. It's not the entire concept of wolves displaying social dominance that was dispelled, just the simple hierarchical pack structure. In response to the same piece, Mech pointed to a 2010 article he published detailing his observance of an adult gray wolf repeatedly pinning and straddling a male pack mate over the course of six and a half minutes. "We interpreted this behavior as an extreme example of an adult wolf harassing a maturing offspring, perhaps in prelude to the offspring's dispersal.""

But the notion of alphas and omegas, as we have traditionally understood them, is pretty much a myth. Based only on studies of captive wolves in what are basically unnatural and forced communities.

Yes , it's a different world than Earth but come on. It's still pretty much the same. It's along the same lines as saying the reason humans on Abode are a lot more dumb is because it's not earth. I think that's at times a cop out because the humans are just made that way in the story because they need to be kept as continuing, looming antagonists in the comic.
Same with the thing with wolves, and I really (personally) don't think it has to do with it being a different planet about this particular subject, it's just too 'neat' and precious in regards to the wolfrider culture.
I think the whole thing with it being set on Abode is due to keeping the geography and cultures somewhat loose, as well as possibly having something to do with the scifi aspect of things, maybe.

Did you guys even read what I posted? Wendy is more accurate than you think, with her ideas about cohesion. Wolves on earth live in family groups-- the alphas are just literally the parents. The younger wolves are all their offspring. On a rare occasion-- an unrelated lone wolf will join up with a wolf pack, but that's atypical. The "omega" wolves are the offspring who are adults and getting ready to leave the pack to go find a mate and start their own families. Then, they squabble with the adults-- who put them down-- or dominate them as part of the process of getting them to leave. Other forms of conflict that involve hierarchy are just parents schooling their kids.

The idea that wolves have "alpha" pairs and "omega" positions was a result of a couple books and a study based primarily on captive wolves forced into packs they would never have naturally formed in the wild. And they are currently considered outdated.

Well, that's weird, if wolf pups go off and form their own packs, then why don't wolfriders do that? I guess maybe it's because there aren't enough of them to splinter off and do so? Maybe that's the problem - elves need to go off on their own and haven't been doing so in EQ, and as a result that's why there are so few births in general LOL.
That would be kind of hilarious if that was the reason.

But not all elves have wolfblood. And the Wolfriders aren't' wolves. So why should they have to act completely like wolves? Haven't they been getting more and more elf and less and less wolf ever since Timmorn? Plus, the wolves that stayed with them are all part elf too (until just recently)-- so why should they act completely wolf-like? And lastly-- I think all of them are related. So they kind of are all a family. Didn't Leetah make some comment like that?

I just think there is enough leeway for it to make sense or at least be passable, storywise.

Zadzi wrote:

Well, that's weird, if wolf pups go off and form their own packs, then why don't wolfriders do that? 

They did once, according to the Anthologies. There were a bunch of smaller groups that ditched Two-Spear. And that was long before the fighting with Skyfire started.

1. It's not Earth.
2. Wolfriders are not wolves - they are elves with a bit of wolfblood left in their heritage.
3. As is generally known Wolfriders don't have a high reproduction rate.
4. Living in couples with one, maybe two cubs does not increase the survival rate.
5. Early Wolfriders tried according to the BotCs novelizations. Several(?) of Rahnee's cubs tried to form own tribe/family groups - not exactly successful

Lunakat, yes, I read some of it. Admittedly, I am working so I skimmed, but I have read some, and posted some of it. I am more reacting along the lines of the elves blood mixed in with the wolves blood. How the wolfish qualities are mainly shown as mostly 'novelties' in terms of how they dress and maybe how they hunt and like red meat, etc.
But the darker behavior of wolves - and yes, it's been shown in the comic that they do at times kill off the offsprings of other wolves at times - is not really integrated as much within the Wolfriders themselves.

Now, the other side of this is the schism that happened around the time of Skyfire/Two-Spear - Skyfire saying they are more elf than wolf, or elves first, who will learn to live within the confines of human presence - and Two-Spear saying they will live as wolfriders and basically kill any humans they come across. In terms of story, I would've loved to have seen more with Two-Spear's tribe, both before as well as after the Willowgreen stuff of blood removal. The earlier version of the wolfriders seemed much more, I dunno, urgent and real and true in terms of the way the dynamics were. It just seems to be now the wolfblood is very diluted but the choices both Wendy and Wingthing have made are very different in terms of story, and I love that Wingthing's deals with the fatalistic mindsets of elves choosing 'the way', and how brutal it can be.

Embala wrote:

5. Early Wolfriders tried according to the BotCs novelizations. Several(?) of Rahnee's cubs tried to form own tribe/family groups - not exactly successful

Ice did. He got his entire group murdered, with the exception of one elf named Willowgreen.
I believe Cat (pretty sure it was Cat?) just left with her two mates tho.

I totally agree with both you guys. I do like how Wingthing has set up her own rules-- and her world is quite a bit darker than Wendy Pini's. The Wolfriders are more conflicted. The powerful, immortal elves are more egotistical-- and have even turned into fascist dictators in some cases. The more advanced the elves become and the more complex their societies, the darker their societies become.

As for Wendy Pini's elves-- I do think that the BoTC short stories explored that edge a lot more thoroughly. They were all about the early Wolfriders-- and how they gradually evolved away from being wolflike to a better state of balance. The stories did NOT translate into comics at all-- first of all, the comics only told about half the stories-- and the stories they did tell, they were only able to communicate half the nuance and implication. The prose stories were so much richer and more interesting. There were several authors-- each author concentrated on one generation of Wolfriders and their chief. Taken together, they really, effectively communicated this sense of early brutishness and conflict and the whole process of evolution that followed. I wish the BoTC comics could have been as good.

Awww man, I need to read the BoTC novels. I still have one of them sitting in storage at my parents' house in Florida. Maybe if we head down there next month, I'll pick it up and read it.

Shadowpath wrote:

Embala wrote:

5. Early Wolfriders tried according to the BotCs novelizations. Several(?) of Rahnee's cubs tried to form own tribe/family groups - not exactly successful

Ice did. He got his entire group murdered, with the exception of one elf named Willowgreen.
I believe Cat (pretty sure it was Cat?) just left with her two mates tho.

I think I remember that. All the early stories were so vague-- but there was def the feeling that mortals and immortals couldn't relate, much less work and live together. The "Hunt" originally looked down on the immortal elves for being helpless- and the immortals looked down on them for being animalistic. A bunch of Timmorn's children and his daughter's children just ran off in small groups or on their own to be what they were. The ones that were left resolved to protect the immortals and became Wolfriders (eventually).

Zadzi wrote:

Awww man, I need to read the BoTC novels. I still have one of them sitting in storage at my parents' house in Florida. Maybe if we head down there next month, I'll pick it up and read it.

I read them a long time ago and remember really liking them. The comic book versions were just disappointing. I think you'd like them a lot. They are fun- and a nice counterweight to all the palacy stuff that's happening now.

Just a thought: If Furrow killed Sunstill, can he actually get punished for it? I mean, I know they could banish him an all, but he could just command the ones who like him to go with him?
(Sorry if I'm getting leaders of groups wrong here.)

It looks like the Evertree is about to be the judge and jury on that verdict, maybe ... and it looks like Furrow is going to be punished for it in some way, like he is getting consumed. And yes, he did kill her, by the looks of it.

Zadzi wrote:

It looks like the Evertree is about to be the judge and jury on that verdict, maybe ... and it looks like Furrow is going to be punished for it in some way, like he is getting consumed. And yes, he did kill her, by the looks of it.  

But that's not a real punishment is it? O_o He just becomes part of them? Sure he might fight the merging, but at some point he'd likely to break and go with the flow?
Unless he's going to be eaten alive over several days/years. That's a punishment I'm ok with.

Oh... the Tree has that in hand.... don't worry.

As for omegas, I stand by my shared link which referred to omega dynamics in wild wolf packs, esp. in the Yellowstone ecosystem. Yes, they are family hierarchies, but that doesn't mean they aren't still hierarchies - and brutal ones at times!

Dysfunctional family hierarchies.....my favorite!

Yeah- alpha wolves are just the parents. Everyone else are th kids. Here's the government webpage of the state of Wisconsin giving factual information about wolves:


http://dnr.wi.gov/topic/wildlifehabitat/wolf/facts.html

The alpha wolves are *usually* the parents. Sometimes the original alpha parents who have been displaced hang around as lower-ranking wolves. Or they get kicked out.

From: http://www.wolftracker.com/Q_&_A/omega.htm
"But we have also observed aggression by dominant members that pushes an omega to disperse.  The classic example thus far in Yellowstone is the case of  Number 39 in the autumn of 1997.  She left the Druid Peak Pack amid a climate of intense aggression brought mainly by her daughters, 42 and 40, upon her."

Another story idea perhaps... more dysfunction at the Evertree?

Furrow's actions have given the Evertree moral and mortal indigestion!


...Also, I forgot to mention from the past installment, Wingthing, but I kind of feel sorry for Leetah. Poor thing having to go through the mortality stuff all over again, it's like never-ending trauma! I take it she's staying in Oasis and not going to Homestead...How's Oasis going to function after Haken & Co. are gone? Is it going to sort of be like Sorrow's End again? It would probably be quite the rude awakening for them to actually do their own hunting again, I imagine. I know Greenflame is going, but is his dad and Grayling going to go ? I kind of got the impression they were staying... like the old gang, with Suntoucher and Ahdri would stay. I'm really weirded out about Maleen going, even though I understand why.

Btw, Wingthing, I liked what Swift was saying about limits and seeing them as confining vs. comfortable. It seems especially apropos since Rayek is learning a pretty tough lesson on limits right now.